


Too Close for Comfort

by Fairfaxleasee



Series: Fenris/Cassia [19]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Blood, Blood and Injury, Established Relationship, F/M, Post-Game(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:07:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26943391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fairfaxleasee/pseuds/Fairfaxleasee
Summary: Fenris and Hawke deal with the aftermath of an assassination attempt in Kirkwall's market.
Relationships: Fenris/Female Hawke
Series: Fenris/Cassia [19]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2141970
Kudos: 14





	Too Close for Comfort

“I’m fine, Fenris. I don’t know what you’re so worried about.”

Fenris glared and considered just how much of what he was so worried about was worth bringing up in this discussion. His immediate concern was that the Chantry Brother from the market had managed to do what the other four assassins from that morning hadn’t and get a hit on his mark.

_ If he even was a Chantry Brother and not from the Crows or the House of Repose. _

To say Cassia Hawke’s tenure as Viscount wasn’t going well would be an understatement. No matter what decision she made, what position she took, what policy she enacted, or what judgement she rendered the only thing Kirkwall, if not all of Thedas, seemed capable of agreeing on was that it had been the wrong one, if for no other reason than she had been the one who had acted. 

The mages saw her as just another ruthless authority figure who was keeping them oppressed, the now common knowledge that her father and sister had been apostates only serving to fuel their indignation. To be fair, she had chosen to aid the Templars after Anders had blown up the Chantry, in part due to an odd sense of personal guilt over what had happened. Somehow, after filtering the events through the archaic labyrinth of her personal code, Cassia had concluded that because she had helped Anders make his preparations, she owed the Chantry recompense- she had a debt that would need to be repaid. Helping Meridith over Orsino, at least in the immediate aftermath, would square the debt freeing her to act as she saw fit afterwards. It had the added benefit of allowing her to stall for time before fully committing to a position, attempt to wait out the knee-jerk reactions until a full and accurate assessment could be made before drawing any conclusions. Her dislike for rushing to a conclusion meant Cassia had, perhaps unfortunately, never seen the overall situation as a choice between the existing Chantry authority and its representatives in the Templar Order and Mages wanting reform, she had seen a choice between irrevocably destabilizing an already tenuous situation and attempting to control the immediate fallout until cooler heads could prevail. She hadn’t been trying to make a statement about how she thought the world should be or take any sort of grand moral stand, she had been looking for a position that didn’t require final commitment in the moment, one that could be walked back, revised, or rethought if necessary based on a thorough review of all pertinent information, which had been why she had been careful to agree to help Meridith  _ secure _ the circle, not to  _ annul _ the circle. Given Meridith’s decision to try and arrest her once she had done the dangerous work, Fenris suspected he wasn’t the only one to catch the distinction. The rest of the Templars, like most of Thedas, had not been so discerning. The Templars were learning the hard way that Cassia was not a woman to give unwavering support to any organization or abstract ideal since her coronation. Like the Mages, most assumed that Cassia would support a continuation of their consolidation of power and methods, they had been unpleasantly surprised when one of her first official acts had been to rescind all the civil authority Dumar had granted to Meridith. They had been livid when she started actually restricting them beyond that, requiring that a member of the City Guard be present during investigations or apprehensions that took place on private property, requiring a trial in Kirkwall’s courts before any punishments could be given, including the Rite of Tranquility, and asserting the authority of the Viscount’s office to investigate allegations against individual Templars. Which had not endeared Cassia to the chantry at large. Her “non-Andrastrian lifestyle;” Fenris was never quite sure whether this was meant to be an insult to him or merely a statement on how she simply didn’t believe in Andraste or the Maker and as such did not, had never, and would not participate in the Chantry; and refusal to allocate money from Kirkwall’s budget to assist in rebuilding the Chantry building only drew further ire and condemnation, as well as baseless rumors that she was a Qunari agent and her killing the Arashok had just been part of some long-term plan to rule Kirkwall in secret. 

The budget, like everything else Cassia had done, had been its own mess. Fenris still remembered the look on Varric’s face when Cass had told him that, yes, she had meant it that the Merchant Guild was going to be assessed taxes for activities in Kirkwall, yes, she had meant it when she said it would need to pay them, yes, pay them meant in full, and no, he absolutely was not excepted from the rule because he was ‘best friends with the Viscount’ (and the Templars and the Cotarie hadn’t been any happier about  _ their _ taxes). While Cassia had been able to scrounge up sufficient funds to start repairing the city’s infrastructure and allow it to keep its position as one of the powers in the Free Marches, the other major cities, with the exception of Sebastian in Starkhaven, had been hoping to use the aftermath of the explosion to either assert their own authority in Kirkwall or at least eliminate it as competition, and had not been pleased when Cassia’s efforts thwarted their plans. Of course to the people in Kirkwall she was prioritizing the repairs all wrong and helping everyone except whichever group happened to be talking to her at the time. Oh, and then there was the fact that her being a Ferelden refugee meant she was just going to hand everything over to King Alistair, in some cases somehow after she had already handed it over to the Qunari and, for some bizarre reason even Varric hadn’t been able to find any explanation for, the Black Divine. For his part, King Alistair had made it clear that Cassia wasn’t doing enough for either the Fereldens living in Kirkwall or elsewhere in the Free Marches and he ‘didn’t understand why she couldn’t be just a little nicer.’ 

Still, while all Thedas had hated Cassia Hawke for doing too much, not enough, nothing at all, and all wrong, the major powers had generally agreed that they preferred her continuing to be Viscount than not, if only to have a convenient scapegoat for anything that happened in Kirkwall they didn’t like. Yes, there had been the odd assassanation attempt since she was crowned, but nothing to be concerned about, given how many people had tried to kill her before she was Viscount and how many people had tried to kill other Viscounts.

That all changed when she had completely overhauled the lyrium trade the previous month. The Templars had been getting more overt in their challenges to her authority for a while beforehand, but they had recently petitioned her for use of the Rite of Tranquility after having already performed it in an ‘emergency.’ They had clearly been counting on the irrefutable proof that the mage in question had been a malificar and the fact that he had been attempting to enthrall one of the Keep’s servants to poison Cassia to be enough to persuade her to allow it to slide. They had been mistaken. She was fairly unimpressed with their reasoning that the situation was simultaneously ‘emergency’ enough for them to not have time to petition beforehand and somehow not ‘emergency’ enough for them not to have time to prepare the lyrium and materials they would need to perform the rite beforehand. While most of what was needed for the rite was extremely common, the lyrium wasn’t. To Cassia the solution was obvious, as the Templars clearly couldn’t be trusted with unsupervised access to lyrium, they would simply have to make do with supervised access. Although, when she thought about it, no one should really ever have unsupervised access to lyrium, so it was simply a matter of her figuring out a way to make sure all access was supervised. Of course with all the smuggling, backroom dealing, and money involved in the lyrium trade everyone assumed it would be a fool’s errand. No one thought much of it when she first said that’s what she was going to do, it had been all they had been thinking about once she actually implemented her plan. At its most basic level, it worked like most of her reforms did, diluting and dividing power among enough parties to render any individual party's interest largely useless in terms of controlling the entire system but still giving them enough reason to continue cooperating, begrudgingly or not. Specifically this plan involved an irregularly assigned contingent of between 3 and 7 guards, 15 separate ledgers cataloging and cross-referencing 10 different things, and a physical lock that required 4 keys held by 4 different people to open that was so complicated Cassia, despite her best efforts to explain it to the other 3 keyholders, was the only one actually able to get it open. And it worked, maybe not perfectly-yet, but well enough to cut into the Chantry’s control, the Templar’s and Mage’s access, the Carta’s and the Merchant’s Guild’s profits, and the power of anyone and everyone who relied on any of those organizations for support. And for that, Cassia Hawke simply had to die.

At first Fenris’s or Squall’s presence had been enough to deter the would-be assassins. The mabari was, objectively, fairly useless, more likely to hide behind Cass than protect her, but Fenris thought,  _ hoped _ , he would be able to come through in a pinch. He had managed to interrupt one of today’s attempts, although that was like as not just because he had happened to run into the woman as he ran off after a stray cat making her stumble and drop her weapon. And that didn’t excuse the fact that he had been nowhere to be found, though likely pilfering half his weight in cheese, when the ‘Chantry Brother’ had seen his opening and struck. Fenris had stupidly left Cass’s side when he had seen a dagger being unsheathed in the crowd. The worst part is he would never know if he had actually been able to dissuade the sixth assassin of the day from making an attempt, if it was a feint set up by one of the three that ran at Cass once he was too far way to stop them, or just a trick of the light. Those three had clearly been professionals. The dwarf with a Castless brand on her face was likely Carta, the human that looked vaguely Chasand may have been a bounty hunter rather than an assassin, which was not as comforting a thought as Fenris would have liked it to have been, but the eerily non-descript elf had almost definitely been from the Crows or House of Repose. And then there was the ‘Chantry Brother.’ Fenris thought, but couldn’t be sure, that he had arrived shortly before Avaline and the bulk of the city guard had. He didn’t remember seeing anyone in Chantry robes in the market when he had been walking with Cass, but he had been looking for weapons, not at clothes. When Squall tripped the first assassin, one of the guards at the market ran for the barracks for reinforcements and most of the people in the market just ran, shockingly almost no one wanted to be too close to yet another attempt on Cass’s life. Fenris had grabbed Cass and pulled her out of the open market and into the enclave under the stairs.

_ I should have stayed there until Avaline got there. _

He admonished himself again.

_ I should never have left her alone. _

But he had seen the dagger, and he had been so focused on protecting Cass from one potential threat that he had left her wide open to four others. She didn’t have too much trouble with the first three, outnumbered by professional assassins or not Cassia Hawke was a formidable opponent. They were the only ones standing in the market once the elf hit the ground, Fenris could hear the guard approaching and remembered seeing the ‘Chantry Brother’ tending to some of the people who had either fallen or been tripped in the bedlam.

“It’s okay. I’m alright. Did you see where Squall went?”

“We can worry about the dog later, besides, knowing him he’s back at the Keep perfectly fine doing something Bran is going to yell at you for.”

_ I need to get her back to the Keep, she’ll be fine if I can just get her back to the Keep. _

“Well, I know, but I still want to know where he went.”

She had taken a step out of the alcove, in the Brother’s direction, left arm up so her hand, still gripping a bloody dagger, could shield her eyes from the sun. Everything Fenris saw seemed to slow down but that hadn’t given him enough time to stop what happened. One of Cass’s kicks had sent the Carta dwarf, and her weapon, skidding across the stones of the empty market, right in front of the fallen merchant the Brother was ministering. Fenris didn’t know, probably would never know, if he was a just another person who hated Cass, saw an opportunity, and took it; was working under orders from the Chantry itself; or was working for one or more of the other interests that wanted his wife dead and wanted to implicate the Chantry, or just didn’t care if it did.

“Cass!”

He reached out, lunging towards her. She turned to look at him, the split second delay in which she had chosen to focus on him rather than her own safety allowed the Brother an opening. In one motion he grabbed the fallen dwarf’s weapon and aimed at Cass’s side to strike her heart. Her own dagger started coming down at his neck, but he had moved quicker and Cass’s blow wasn’t going to land before his. Fenris just hoped the guard’s arrow had. Cass stepped back as yet another body fell in front of her, her arms limp at her sides covering where the blow would have landed. She had begun turning to look at him again when Aveline’s voice cut her off and snapped Fenris out of his trance.

“YOU!” 

She indicated Cass.

“Back to the Keep. NOW!”

He watched her shoulders slump slightly as she started moving in the direction of the Keep and Fenris’s vague fears about Cass being hurt crystalized.

_ She never doesn’t argue. _

“Lenko! Williams! See that she gets there!”

Fenris wasn’t familiar with these guards, but he trusted that Aveline wouldn’t have assigned them to escort Cass if she wasn’t sure they could do it.

“And you.”

Fenris swallowed, vaguely wondering how it was that Aveline still managed to terrify him when she got like this.

“Explain. And make it good.”

“She was looking for the damn dog…”

If Aveline’s expression was anything to go by, it had been a mistake to start with that.

The racket the damn dog was currently making, happily digging away at the pillows on the bed in Cass’s private rooms, interrupted Fenris’s thoughts. Well, semi-private seeing as he occupied them too. The damn dog was also Aveline’s prime suspect in the raiding of a cheese stall in the market, and likely entirely unaware that anything had happened at all, aside from the cat and the free meal. Fenris motioned for him to get off the bed, annoyed but unsuprised that the only reaction that got was a few excited barks followed by a play bow and running in tiny circles on the bed before throwing himself down on the pillows, tail wagging wildly.

Fenris decided to ignore him for now and focus on Cass. Her leaving the market without argument had been out of character, and concerning enough, but she had also changed after getting back, into a heavy linen shirt he knew she hated, but its ridiculous bat sleeves, ‘all the rage in Orlais this season,’ according to Bran meant none of the fabric would touch her sides. And there was the fire, completely unnecessary in the early Kirkwall fall, unless one was looking to burn something, like a bloody tunic. She tried to excuse that by putting a kettle on for tea, and while she remembered the leaves and the pot, she had forgotten the cups. Most distressing of all was Cass herself. Her typically fair complexion was downright pallid, her eyes were dull and unfocused, and she was sweating-and the fire hadn’t made the room quite that hot yet. She was also still, sitting on the edge of the desk. He couldn’t remember the last time he had entered a room and she was still, her anxiety and ingrained desperation to do something  _ correctly _ , even as she knew it was impossible was driving her to pace and fidget incessantly. He also couldn’t remember her ever relying on furniture for support the way she was the desk now. He was positive she was hurt, it was just a matter of figuring out where exactly...and how badly.

“Cassia.”

He crossed to stand in front of her at the desk and reached out his hand to run it through her auburn hair, parts becoming almost gold as it reflected the firelight.

“You know I do not consider you fine when you’re hurt.”

She leaned into his touch as he moved his hand to her cheek. Despite his worries, he smiled as he looked at her. It had taken weeks for her to stop flinching at his touch, months for her to start to enjoy it, and years for her to find comfort or revel in it like she was now.

“I just...I hate when you worry about me.”

From others the sentiment would have come off as somewhere between apathetic and hostile. But Fenris knew Cass well enough to know that she meant she hated when something she had done, or had been done to her, was causing him to worry. She never liked seeing him in distress, but she hated it, and herself, when she was what caused it.

“Then may I suggest you find a way to stop getting hurt?”

She laughed, then winced and clutched her left side.

He ran his thumb along her cheekbone and leaned in to kiss her temple, smelling her hair as he did so; saddened to find her normally exquisite scent tainted by blood and salve. He moved his hand to grab the hem of her shirt. She covered his hands with her own, coaxing his fingers to loosen their grip so hers could take their place. 

“It looks worse than it is.”

He didn’t believe her. She always downplayed her own injuries and illnesses, perhaps not deliberately as they didn’t seem to distress her any, beyond her dislike of seeing him worry. She refused to make her own safety a priority, but it would always be his.

She began to lift the shirt, her right arm came free with no difficulty but raising her left too high was clearly painful. He took over for her, lifting the loose fabric over her head before bringing it down over her left arm to remove it completely. Then he tossed the garment in the fire.

She looked at him with poorly disguised glee at being rid of it.

“Clumsy,” he offered by way of explanation.

“Bran’s going to think I did it.”

“Then I shall just have to confess. I can use the opportunity to warn him against buying you more clothes.”

“I’ve been telling him that since before the coronation. It hasn’t done any good.”

“Yes, but you are an eminently reasonable and famously practical woman. I am an angry fugitive elf known to occasionally rip men’s hearts out.”

She smiled, too tired or in pain to actually laugh again and shifted to lean into him rather than the table, her chest resting on his, head nestled in the crook of his neck. With this much of her pressed against him without her shirt or hair between him he was able to feel her fever.

“Cass…”

She shook her head vaguely.

“Mmm...it really does look worse than it is. I’m just tired.”

“I believe one of those things.”

“No one believes I get tired…”

Fenris considered this statement. All the people who kept hiring the assassins were wasting their time. Being Viscount was slowly killing Cass, she took everything that went wrong as a reflection on her, chalking it up to a personal failure no matter how hard he or anyone else tried to persuade her otherwise, or how little control she had over what happened, or just how much effort had been put into ensuring that things wouldn’t go right.

“Cassia, you don’t have to…”

“Don’t, Fenris. I DO have to. I said I’d do it, so now I have to. Besides, who the fuck else is going to fix this blighted mess that’s partially my fault anyway.”

_ Damnable abomination…how many people manage to keep causing trouble when they’re dead? _

Cass had never forgiven herself for helping Anders. Never mind that he had lied to her, manipulated her, attempted to blackmail her into helping further once she figured out he had lied, or would have gotten the ingredients from somewhere else if she had refused.

“What happened with the Chantry was Ander’s fault.”

“But I didn’t stop it! I’m supposed to be so fucking smart and I didn’t stop it!”

“No one stopped it. No one COULD HAVE stopped it. You heard what he said, it was what he wanted to do even before he turned himself into an abomination. And you have done more to try and fix things than anyone else in this city. And it is not working because no one wants things fixed, they just want to blame you and everyone else for them being broken.”

“But if I can’t fix things…”

He leaned in and kissed her wildly, running his tongue over hers, catching her bottom lip between his teeth. Anything to keep them from forming the words he knew she was going to use to finish the thought.

_ ‘But if I can’t fix things why should anyone put up with me?’ _

Fenris wasn’t sure how or when she had acquired it, definitely before they had met, likely earlier than she could remember, but Cassia just couldn’t shake the idea that her very existence was something that needed to be excused. That she needed to provide some sort of tangible benefit to make up for being the way she was. Even with him something compelled her to apologize or bargain when she believed she was asking too much of him, which was nothing compared to what he was willing to give.

She had her right hand behind his ear and curled her fingers over the top rubbing her fingertips along it. It took him a few seconds to remember why her left wasn’t in his hair or mirroring the movements. He broke the kiss and gently reclaimed his ear, she let out a small moan of protest.

She had attempted to bandage the wound, but whether she had done a poor job due to the awkward angle or just hadn’t had time to finish properly before feigning wellness when he entered he wasn’t sure. Blood and salve were leaking from under the bandages. He unwound them, careful not to move her too much as he did so, revealing the layer of gauze that was the last thing concealing the wound.

“It really, really does look worse than it is.”

“Forgive me if I am not reassured.”

He hooked the kettle out of the fire, it hadn’t been boiling for long but long enough. He went to get more dressings from the supply he had insisted on putting in their bedroom when Isabella had sent word that the Crows had taken a contract for Cass and a bowl for the water.

“You should get some more yarrow and nettle while you’re over there.”

“I thought it looked worse than it was?”

“I thought you didn’t believe that.”

“Hawke…”

She clicked her tongue in resigned surrender. He rarely used her surname anymore, assuming it even  _ was _ her surname anymore, but it served its purpose of signaling to her to stop dodging his questions.

“Adder’s Kiss looks terrible. Very nasty shade of green.”

“Adder’s Kiss can kill you.”

“Only if you don’t put on the antivenom.”

He glared at her.

“I put on the antivenom!”

“Then why do you need the herbs?”

She muttered something that sounded vaguely like ‘You’ll see when you get over here.’

He grabbed the jars before crossing back to the desk.

“How much?”

She tried to reach for the bowl.

“I can do it…”

He pulled it back from her.

“No, you’re hurt. We have a deal.”

“You said you hated the deal.”

“Only when I’m the one who’s hurt and have to sit back and let you take care of me. Now how much?”

She sighed and stopped resisting. It wasn’t that either of them disliked the attention, but he hated feeling helpless just as much as she hated feeling like a burden, hence the deal, which had been Cass’s idea in the first place: sick and/or injured one shuts up and lets the other one do all the work.

“Enough yarrow to cover the bottom of the bowl. A few sprigs of the nettle.”

He followed the instructions, showing her the bowl to make sure he had gotten it right and waiting for her nod before pouring the steaming water into it. He dipped a strip of cloth into the tincture and applied it to her side to loosen the gauze before he peeled it off.

_ She better have been right about this looking worse than it is. _

It looked terrible, the poison from the blade had indeed given the wound a greenish hue, the blade had gone deep enough for him to see a rib, and...

“Hesserian’s Mercy, Cassia.”

“See? It looks worse than it is.”

“Because the tip of the damn knife is stopping the bleeding!”

He could see its ragged edge jutting out from between two of her ribs. 

_ I should be thanking the Maker it broke, if it hadn’t… _

If it hadn’t she would be dead in the market. And he would have lost all that mattered to him.

“Cass…”

“I know, okay?”

“This cannot happen again.”

“I know…”

“No, Cass. This  _ will _ not happen again. Aveline and Bran decided it, you’re not leaving the Keep from now on. Not unless things calm down.”

“But…”

He placed his hands along the sides of her face and pressed his forehead into hers.

“Cassia by rights you should be dead right now-it WILL not happen again!”

“Fenris…”

“We’re staying in the suite unless they need you in a meeting, Orana or Avaline will bring supplies from Varric as we need them…”

“We?”

“I am not leaving your side again, Cassia.”

“Fenris, I...I can’t ask you to do that, be my bodyguard?”

While he hated what it had taken for Cass to even broach the subject of him being her bodyguard (despite the fact that was what he ostensibly already was; Bran had been vocal about him not being allowed in the Keep but couldn't pretend Cass, or any Viscount, wouldn't need one and he'd learned enough about Cass to realize if she wanted Fenris to have the job, she'd make sure no one else would be willing to take it) he was relieved that she would  _ finally  _ stop fighting him about it and let him protect her the way he wanted to. The way she deserved to be protected. And needed to be, given what had just happened. “You did not ask. And I am not doing this because you are the Viscount and need protection. I am doing this because you are the woman I love, my  _ wife _ , and I will protect you.”

He drew away from her and lifted her chin then waited until she met his eyes.

“And I told you, nothing could be worse than the thought of living without you.”

“I…”

Her eyes drifted away from his but she reached up with her right hand to grab his wrist, running her thumb in small circles on his skin.

“I could not do this without you, Fenris.”

He looked down at her left hand at the ring he had put there. He had given it to her the day before her coronation and until she’d worked out a way for them to elope (finding a Chantry willing to marry the most infamous woman in Thedas and an elven slave had been the easy part, keeping Bran from making a nuisance of himself and interfering before the ceremony was done had been a bigger challenge). They were bound together without the ring or the ceremony; he couldn't imagine facing the world without her by his side any more than she could without him. Sometimes he wondered just how long they had been connected. They had known each other the better part of a decade but had only been sharing their lives a tiny fraction of it. They had both wasted years hesitating and he had wasted more regretting and hiding from a stupid, terrible mistake that she had forgiven without hesitation as soon as he gave her the chance to, but still, he was almost sure that even when the only thing he knew about her was that while she didn't care about being bait to distract an ambush of Teventer slave-catchers she most certainly DID care if someone had lied to her about what she was supposed to be doing, she was what had kept him in Kirkwall. For all he knew, she had been what had brought him here in the first place. As deep as their bond ran, having a physical reminder there was reassuring to both of them. It reminded her of his promise when he had put it on, that he would always be there with her, for her; and it reminded him that even as he watched her give so much to people who would only resent her for it, there were parts of her that were only for him. 

He took her left hand and twisted the ring the way she sometimes would to try to curb her anxiety as he whispered, “You will never have to. But this is probably going to hurt, so try and hold still.”

He took her left arm and rested it on his shoulder. He took a new strip of cloth, submerged it, and swirled it in the tincture. When he removed it he squeezed it a few times before applying it to her side to clean the wound. She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her lips between her teeth, in pain but trying not to move or cry out. He could feel her breathing hitch whenever he moved the cloth to a new area.

_ And this isn’t even the worst part. _

He examined the wound. The green from the Adder’s Kiss was gone, either finally neutralized by the antivenom or washed away just before. The edge of the tip was just barely sticking out, but he couldn’t tell what angle it had gone in at or how much was in there so wasn’t sure the best way to try and remove it. He lightly touched the area around the tip to try and feel out what he was dealing with. He had barely started applying pressure when Cass whimpered.

“Fenris, please. Just...just do it.”

“It will hurt more…”

“I know, but please, I don’t know how much more I can take and I just want it done.”

_ She must be in a lot of pain. _

Cass hated admitting her limits like that. There was something inside her that demanded she do more, be better, and never stop. Fenris hated watching her push herself to be more than any person could be expected to be. So when she told him she didn’t think she could do something, he made sure to listen.

“Alright. Hold onto me.”

He put another few pieces of cloth in the tincture so they would be ready when he needed them. She wrapped her arms behind his head and rested her head on his jugular notch. It made it almost impossible to see what he was doing, and he considered moving her, but he had his fingers around the edge of the tip and as long as he didn’t lose it shouldn’t need to look again.

He attuned his tattoos until he was slowly able to sink his fingers into her. She grit her teeth and let out a hiss of pain. He could feel her beginning to shake. He didn’t have time to be careful, as soon as his fingers were in deep enough to get a firm grip on the tip he yanked it out. He thought he might have cracked one of her ribs in his haste to remove the metal, but the blood now pouring from the wound was a more immediate concern. He grabbed one of the soaking cloths and pressed it on the wound.

“The yarrow...should help stop the bleeding...and the nettle...should help with the pain.”

Fenris wasn’t sure whether she was explaining this to him or herself. He kept the cloth in place until he felt her breathing stabilize. She put her hand over his on the cloth. He slid his out as she took over keeping pressure on the wound so he could get a new cloth. When it was ready she slowly removed the now blood-soaked cloth from her side so he could see what they were dealing with. 

Neither of them suggested getting a healer. Fenris doubted any of them would even bother coming, and if one did, well, he wasn’t willing to risk it.

Blood still flowed from the wound, but not at the concerning rate it had been when he first removed the jagged bit of metal. Still, they were probably going to have to clean the wound and change the dressing several times that day. Varric would be able to get them the supplies they would need.

_ And she has to keep still… _

This was probably the biggest obstacle. While Cass would likely cooperate in the short term, he knew that once she started feeling better she would push herself harder than she should. Of course he did the same when their roles were reversed. 

He handed her the clean cloth and she pressed it down as he began wiping the blood off her side before beginning to wrap a bandage around her. Her breasts made the job difficult. They would likely make the job more difficult as she started feeling better and she started trying to exploit his fondness for them to tempt him into doing things they shouldn’t. Not that he was above using such tactics himself, but somehow she always had more success with them than he did.

“Cass, will you keep still until you’re healed?”

“Doubtful. Would you?”

“I will tie you to the bed if I have to.”

“You tie me to the bed when you don’t have to. I’m not usually very still after you do it though.”

He pulled the bandage taut before securing it, flashes of her writhing in pleasure beneath him tugging desperately against the restraints making him grin in spite of himself.

“Then I suppose I’ll just be forced to not tie you to the bed if I have to.”

He cradled her cheek in his hand, rubbing his thumb along her cheekbone. She gently pressed her lips to his wrist and leaned into his hand.

“Tired?”

“Mmm…”

He couldn’t quite tell if she had meant it as assent or one of her perfunctory denials that she knew wasn’t true and wouldn’t be believed but liked making anyway.

“Do you need to lie down now?”

The desk she was sitting on wasn’t an ideal for her to lie on. She was too tall to lie flat on it without her head or her hips hanging over the side, it had worked to his advantage when she was spending too much time working at it and he intervened to make her focus on other activities, but problematic at that moment.

“No, I’m okay for a few minutes.”

She wobbled slightly when he removed his hand, but was able to use her arms to steady herself once she grabbed the edge of the desk. But she wouldn’t be able to keep it up for long.

He turned to the bed. Squall had clearly realized something was going on because he was half buried in the pile of pillows keeping extremely still, eyes locked on Fenris. He only kept that still when he knew he was about to be forced off the bed and was trying to blend in with the pillows.

_ Stupid dog picks the worst times to be smart about things… _

Fortunately even when he was being smart about one thing, he stayed stupid about everything else. Fenris knocked on the door to the bedroom. Squall sprang up and ran to it, barking madly ready to investigate just who was on the other side of the door. As soon as Squall was in front of the door, he jerked it open and the dog ran through. Fenris shut it quickly behind him.

“You know it’s mean to take advantage just because you’re smarter than him.”

“I think the cheese he stole was smarter than him.”

Fenris crossed to the bed and lifted back the bedspread Squall had been laying on before going to the desk to collect Cass. She put her arm around him without complaint and they began moving to the bed. Her movements were stiff and hesitant, but he didn’t want to risk her collapsing on the floor so he pressed her pace just a bit. Easier to re-tie the bandage than have her injure herself falling.

She sank onto the mattress and he guided her down to lie on her right side. The bandage had come a bit loose with her movement but it would be fine for the time being, and he didn’t want to force her upright which would be needed for him to fix it properly.

“Cass…”

She didn’t respond. He could tell she was asleep from her steady, easy breathing. He brushed a few auburn waves of hair out of her face. They quickly slid from where he had placed them, as determined as she was to do things their own way. He wanted to lie in the bed beside her, hold her close so her warmth could remind him that she was still alive, still with him, but he had preparations to make if they were to stay in these rooms. He settled for setting a kiss on her neck, taking comfort in the feeling of her pulse beneath his lips.


End file.
